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One of the interesting things about the infrastructure bill that has been proposed in Congress is it talks a lot about universal high-speed broadband access in the same way that, back in the ’30s, the recovery bills from the Great Depression talked about telephone access for everybody.

Does anyone know about how this legislation worked out? Did it really get more people telephone access?

I'm skeptical of any praise toward the New Deal, because it's almost universally praised by just about everyone, but then you dig into it and you find out that agencies like the NRA[0] were so bad that even their proponents had to admit they were a failure, and the "successful" programs that lasted, like Social Security, pale in comparison to more modern programs like Australia's Super.

I don't hate the idea of the government delivering internet, but more like they deliver water or electricity, at the municipal level, rather than some set of national, overarching subsidies and regulations that will probably create perverse incentives all over this very large country.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Recovery_Administrati....

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